e there."

"Ay, now," he broke out, "to think I didn' remember that verse about
children when I started to sing! And 'twas of you, missy, and the young
master here the dear Lord was thinkin' all the time!"

He dropped his eyes and, leaning back against the handle of the sweep,
suddenly burst into prayer. "Suffer little children, O dear Jesus! suffer
little children. Have mercy on these two tender lambs, and so bring them,
blessed Lord, to Thy fold!"

As his fervour took hold of him he left the sweep to do its own steering,
and strode up and down the raft, picking his way from balk to balk,
skipping aside now and again as the water rose between them under his
weight and overflowed his shoes. To Myra, unaccustomed to be prayed for
aloud and by name, the whole performance was absurd and embarrassing.
She blushed hotly under the eyes of the other men, and glanced at Clem,
expecting him to be no less perturbed.

But Clem did not hear. The two children had taken off their boots, and he
sat with the water playing over his naked insteps and his eyes turned
southward to the horizon as if indeed he saw. With his blind gaze
fastened there he seemed to wait patiently until Billy's prayer exhausted
itself and Billy returned to the steering; and then his lips too began to
move, and he broke into a curious song.

It frightened Myra, who had never heard the like of it; for it had no
words, but was just a sing-song--a chant, low at first, then rising shrill
and clear and strong, and reaching out as though to challenge the waters
twinkling between raft and horizon. Through it there ran a note of high
courage touched with tremulous yearning--yearning to escape yonder and be
free.

She touched his hand. So well she loved and understood him, that even
this strange outbreak she could interpret, though it caught her at
unawares. For the moment he did not feel the touch; he was far away.
He had forgotten her--alas!--with his blindness. She belonged to his
weakness, not to his strength. For the while he dwelt in the vision of
his true manhood, which only his one infirmity forbade his inheriting; and
she had no place in it.

He came back to reality with a pitiful break and quaver of the voice, and
turned his eyes helplessly toward her. She answered his gaze timidly, as
though he could see her. She was searching his eyes for tears. But there
was no trace of tears in them. He took the food she handed him from Aunt
Purchase's